Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American musician, songwriter, film score composer, record producer, and writer. He is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in traditional music, and his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.
Stanley Clarke is an American bassist, film composer and founding member of Return to Forever, one of the first jazz fusion bands. Clarke gave the bass guitar a prominence it lacked in jazz-related music. He is the first jazz-fusion bassist to headline tours, sell out shows worldwide and have recordings reach gold status.
Henry St. Claire Fredericks, Jr., better known by his stage name Taj Mahal, is an American blues musician, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, actor, and film composer. He plays the guitar, piano, banjo, harmonica, and many other instruments, often incorporating elements of world music into his work. Mahal has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his more than 50-year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa, India, Hawaii, and the South Pacific.
A Mohan Veena is either of two distinct plucked string instruments used in Indian classical music, especially Hindustani classical music which is associated with the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent. A modified sarod, created by sarod player Radhika Mohan Maitra in the 1940s, was called the mohan veena. The instrument was so named by musicologist Thakur Jaidev Singh, then the chief producer at All India Radio. Later Vishwa Mohan Bhatt modified a Hawaiian guitar to create an instrument also called the mohan veena, with Bhatt naming the instrument after himself. The latter instrument has become more closely associated with the name, especially following Bhatt winning the Grammy Award in 1994.
Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, also known as V. M. Bhatt, is a Hindustani classical music instrumentalist who plays the Mohan veena.
Rob Ickes [rhymes with "bikes"] is an American dobro player, born 1967 in San Francisco, California, United States. Ickes moved to Nashville in 1992 and joined the contemporary bluegrass band Blue Highway as a founding member in 1994. He currently collaborates with guitarist Trey Hensley, with whom he has released three albums. Ickes has been nominated for numerous Grammy Awards, winning two in 1994 for bluegrass and gospel albums he contributed to.
Harry Manx is a Canadian musician who blends blues, folk music, and Hindustani classical music. His official website describes his music as being a "blend Indian folk melodies with slide guitar blues, add a sprinkle of gospel and some compelling grooves and you'll get Manx's unique "mysticssippi" flavour." Manx plays the slide guitar, harmonica, six-string banjo, mohan veena and Ellis stomp box. He studied for five years in India with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt. Bhatt is the inventor of the 20-stringed mohan veena, which has become Manx's signature instrument. He has released twelve albums in twelve years, and has his own record label Dog My Cats Records. He has received much recognition and many awards, including: seven Maple Blues Awards, six Juno nominations, the Canadian Folk Music Award in 2005 for Best Solo Artist, and CBC Radio’s "Great Canadian Blues Award" in 2007.
Canadian blues is the blues and blues-related music performed by blues bands and performers in Canada. Canadian blues artists include singers, players of the main blues instruments: guitar, harmonica, keyboards, bass and drums, songwriters and music producers. In many cases, blues artists take on multiple roles. For example, the Canadian blues artist Steve Marriner is a singer, harmonica player, guitarist, songwriter and record producer.
Vasanta Habba, which means spring festival in the Kannada language, is a cultural festival organised by the Nrityagram foundation in the city of Bangalore, India. It is a very popular event and is considered the classical Woodstock of India. This festival, first held in the year 1990, was the brainchild of Protima Bedi, the founder of Nrityagram. The festival is held in the premises of Nrityagram at Hesaraghatta in the outskirts of Bangalore and attracts the best musicians, dancers and cultural artists from across India. Starting from an audience of about 3000 in its inaugural year, the 2003 edition saw over 40,000 people attending the event.
Cassius Khan, is a Juno and WCMA nominated Canadian Indian classical musician known for playing the Tabla while singing.
Doug Cox is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and music programmer, and is currently signed to Toronto's NorthernBlues Music.
John Boutté is an American jazz singer based in New Orleans, Louisiana, who has been active since the mid-1990s. He is known for diverse music style that goes beyond jazz to R&B, gospel, Latin, and blues. He is the younger brother of the jazz and gospel singer Lillian Boutté, and a relative of legendary cartoonist George Herriman.
Tabula Rasā is a collaborative album by American banjoist Béla Fleck together with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Jie-Bing Chen, who plays the traditional Chinese two-string fiddle "Erhu". The unusual combination of Fleck's banjo together with these traditional instruments creates a unique sound on this album, which was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best World Music Album at the 39th Grammy Awards.
Ranjit Barot is an Indian film score composer, music director, music arranger, drummer and singer based in Mumbai, India. He is a longtime associate of A. R. Rahman.
A Meeting by the River is an album recorded by Ry Cooder and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt; it was recorded in September 1992 and released in April 1993 through the record label Water Lily Acoustics. This improvised, collaborative album features Cooder on slide guitar and Bhatt on the Mohan veena, a stringed instrument created by Bhatt. A Meeting by the River was produced by Kavichandran Alexander and Jayant Shah, engineered by Alexander, and mastered by Kevin Michael Gray and Paul Stubblebine. It peaked at number four on Billboard's Top World Music Albums chart, and earned Cooder and Bhatt Grammy Awards for Best World Music Album at the 36th Grammy Awards (1994). The album is included in Tom Moon's 2008 book 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die.
Sandeep Das is an Indian Tabla player and composer currently based in Boston, MA.
Tansen Samaroh or Tansen Sangeet Samaroh is celebrated every year in the month of December in Behat village of Gwalior district, Madhya Pradesh. It is a 4-day musical extravaganza. Artists and music lovers from all over the world gather here to pay tribute to the Great Indian Musical Maestro Tansen. The event is organized near the tomb of Tansen by Ustad Alauddin Khan Kala Evam Sangeet Academy, under the department of culture, Government of Madhya Pradesh. Artists from all over India are invited to deliver vocal and instrumental performances.
Bill Johnson is a Canadian blues guitarist, singer-songwriter and music educator. After a long career as a sideman and guitarist in the 1990s, he began touring with The Bill Johnson Band. They released their second album, Live, in 2006, which led to Johnson being nominated for Best Guitarist at the Maple Blues Awards. He self-released his third solo album, Still Blue, in 2010, which was nominated for Blues Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2012. Johnson continues to tour and has hosted blues workshops throughout Canada.
Michael Messer is an English singer, songwriter, slide guitarist and record producer. He is noteworthy for his ability to combine acoustic National steel guitar, as well as slide guitar, into his playing style. The American magazine Spirit listed Messer as one of the greatest slide guitarists alongside Duane Allman and Ry Cooder.
